Sunday, February 4, 2018

The Movie 'Matrix' and Buddhism - Who created the World?




The Matrix Poster


The World: All is projected (or made) by Mind 

According to Buddhism, everything in the world is projected by our mind. 
The movie Matrix is exactly showing how our world is projected according 
to each character's mind and subconscious. Not only for the basic concept 
of the movie, the Matrix is also deeply based on many different religions, 
especially Asian religions and Buddhism.

In other words, the world view described by the movie is not for Monistic or 
god-based at all; it is rather toward for representing and implicating relative 
view of our world and life.
In the actual scenes of the movie, Neo or other characters experience what 
they imagine and want whenever they are on their visions while fighting 
against all the attacks created by the hacker.
Although the visions seem just a vision, but they experience them as real 
as their body and physical conditions go through up and down; in other words, 
they are not clear distinction between the real and the illusion.
Although Neo met the Creator of the world, he couldn't find the answer how 
the world is created and operated; Neo found that he is the One, who can save 
the world.
In other words, the one created world can solve the issues caused by his own 
mind or the mental creation; not the God.


Who is the 'One' - 'someone who is managed by the creation' or 
'someone who is to control their own mind and creation' ?

Contrary to most monistic or Semitic relgions like Christianity or Islamism, 
Buddhism is always emphasizing your own awakening yourself and your situation 
being separated from yourself. If you become to control your mind and your 
mental creation, you are Buddha itself, who control what you are thinking, seeing 
and even creating.
What is described in the movie, the Matrix is the same. Neo is the person who 
experience through all of his subconscious activities as well as who can solve 
the troubles and issues.
According to Buddhism, although you are experiencing all the difficulties and 
sufferings, if you know the cause of the sufferings, you are to solve your sufferings. 
Otherwise, you could manage your life just as sentient beings.
Lots of people living in this world tend to complain their situations without 
taking a look at themselves more deeply and fundamentally. What you are 
experiencing are all caused by your mental projections or creations. What are 
the causes of your sufferings? The answer is your attachmentanger, and ignorance.


The Original Human Nature = Buddhahood

Buddhist teaching is or Buddha's teaching is trying to give you an antidote for 
your suffering life. Although you have your own transparent mind that can reflect 
the entire world as it is, most sentient beings are suffering due to their distorted 
viewpoint or attachment. However, Buddhahood is not separated from your mind 
only if you are able to see through what you experience and feel without  attaching 
or discriminating it.
 Most human beings may experience their own world in a very rough way as Neo does 
through their entire life. Nevertheless Buddhist teaching is emphasizing the entirety 
of your viewpoint rather than attaching it by practicing and meditating through your 
own mind.
Ultimately, you are not going to project the world with your own bias or prejudice
which will lead your life as a buddha itself.
There is no one else who are responsible for what you created and managed 
through the entire period of your life. The ownership of your life doesn't even 
end in this life - you could travel until you fully recover your ownership or your 
life according to Buddha.

- Written by BJ Avilla 

Saturday, November 25, 2017

[Script & Analysis] The Diamond Sutra - Quotes

The Diamond Sutra - Quotes


The original quotes are made by the youtube user 'trulyhelpful' and posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwuE9lAYZo.

The texts were written down by BJ Avilla, and analyzed into the four essential parts: 
A) Emptiness of the Reality, B) the Method of Buddhist Meditational Practice, C) the True Nature of Buddha/Enlightenment, D) the Way to Deal With Conditioned Phenomena

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A. Emptiness of the Reality

The Buddha cannot be recognized by means of his bodily form.
Why? Because when the Buddha speaks of bodily form, it is not a real form, but only an illusion.
Verse #1) All that has form is illusive and unreal.
When you see that all forms are illusive and unreal, then you will begin to perceive your true Buddha nature.
And yet, even as I speak, I must take back my words as soon as they are uttered, for there are no Buddhas
and there are no teachings.
A true disciple entering the stream which flows to enlightenment would not think of themselves as a separate person that could be entering anything.
Only that disciple who does not differentiate themselves from others - who has no regard for name, shape, sound, odour, taste, touch or for any quality - can truly be called a disciple who has entered the stream.
There is no passing away, or coming into, existence. Only one who realizes this can really be called a disciple.
There is no such thing as Perfect Enlightenment to obtain.
If a Perfectly Enlightened Buddha were to say to himself - 'I am enlightened' - he would be admitting there is an individual person, a sperate self and personality - and would therefore not be a Perfectly Enlightened Buddha.


B.  the Method of Buddhist Meditational Practice

Verse #2) A disciple should develop mind which is in no way dependent upon sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensory sensations - or any mental conceptions.  A disciple should develop a mind which does not rely on anything.
The disciple's mind should be kept independent of any thoughts that might arise within it.
If the disciple's mind depends upon anything in the sensory realm it will have no solid foundation in any reality.
Just as the Buddha declares that form is not form, so he also declares that all living beings are, in fact, not living beings.
A true disciple knows that there is no such thing as a self, a person, a living being, or a universal self.
A true disciple knows that all things are devoid of selfhood, devoid of any separate individuality.
All modes, conceptions and tendencies of thought are not mind.
Why?
Because it is impossible to retain a past thought, to seize a future thought, and even to hold onto a present thought.


C. the True Nature of Buddha/Enlightenment

When I attained total Enlightenment, I did not feel, as the mind feels, any arbitrary conception of spiritual truth - not even the slightest.
Even the words 'total Enlightenment' are merely words, they are used merely as a figure of speech.
What I have attained in total Enlightenment is the same as what all others have attained.
It is undifferentiated, regarded neither as a high state, nor a low state.
Do not say that the Buddha as the idea, 'I will lead all sentient beings to Nirvana.' Do not think that way.
In truth there is not one single being for the Buddha to lead to Enlightenment.
If the Buddha were to think there was, he would be caught in the idea of a self, a person, a living being, or a universal self.
What the Buddha calls a self essentially has no self in the way that ordinary persons think there is a self.
Verse #3) If any person were to say that the Buddha is now coming or going, or sitting up or lying down - they would not have understood the principle I have been teaching.
Why? Because the true Buddha is never coming from anywhere or going anywhere.
The name 'Buddha' is merely an expression, a figure of speech.
When people begin their practice of seeking to attaining total Enlightenment - they ought to see, to perceive, to know, to understand, and to realize that all things and all spiritual truths are no-things. - and, therefore, they ought not conceive within their minds any arbitrary conceptions whatsoever.

D. the Way to Deal With Conditioned Phenomena

This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:
Verse #4) Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, Or flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream. So is all conditioned existence to be seen.
Thus spoke Buddha.

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Analyzed & Organized by BJ Avilla



Thursday, November 9, 2017

Who is historical Buddha?


   The Buddha, whose personal name was Siddhattha (Siddhartha in Sanskrit), and family name Gotama (Skt. Guatama), lived in North India in the 6th century B.C. His father, Suddhodana, was the ruler of the kingdom of the Sakyas (in modern Nepal). His mother was queen Maya. According to the custom of the time, he was married quite young, at the age of sixteen, to a beautiful and devoted young princess names Yashodhara. The young prince lived in his palace with every luxury at his command. But all of a sudden, confronted with the reality of life and the suffering of mankind, he decided to find the solution - the way out of this universal suffering. At the age of 29, soon after the birth of his only child, Rahula, he left his kingdom and became an ascetic in search of this solution.

   For six years the ascetic Gotama wandered about the valley of the Ganges, meeting famous religious teachers, studying and following their systems and methods, and submitting himself to rigorous ascetic practices. They did not satisfy him. So he abandoned all traditional religions and their methods and went his own way. It was thus that one evening, seated under a tree (since then known as the Bodhi- or Bo-tree, 'the Tree of Wisdom'), on the bank of the river Neranjara at Buddha-Gaya (near Gaya in modern Bihar), at the age of 35, Gotama attained Enlightenment, after which he was known as the Buddha, 'The Enlightened One'.

   After his Enlightenment, Gotama the Buddha delivered his first sermon to a group of five ascetics, his old colleagues, in the Deer Park at Isipatana (modern Sarnath) near Benares. From that day, for 45 years, he taught all classes of men and women - Icings and peasants, Brahmins and outcasts, bankers and beggars, holy men and robbers - without making the slightest distinction between them. He recognized no differences of caste or social groupings, and the Way he preached was open to all men and women who were ready to understand and to follow it.

   At the age of 80, the Buddha passed away at Kusinara (in modern Uttar Pradesh in India).

   Today Buddhism is found in Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Tibet, China, Japan, Mongolia, Korea, Formosa, in some parts of India, Pakistan and Nepal, and also in the Soviet Union. The Buddhist population of the world is over 500 million.

- from 'Buddha', What the Buddha Taught (1974), By Walpola Rahula

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0802130313/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=15121&creative=330641&creativeASIN=0802130313&linkCode=as2&tag=bjavilla-20&linkId=4370ed1df0c42e975e63497f6a4467c8

Thursday, November 2, 2017

[Book Introduction] Some (Hollywood) Versions of Enlightenment


Picture


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Introduction
Some (Hollywood) Versions of Enlightenment
JOHN WHALEN-BRIDGE

Buddhism has been a subject of cinematic attention since film’s
origins, often signifying exoticism, both in flattering and unflattering
ways. Film as a form of documentary practice begins in the
late nineteenth century, and film as a form of public entertainment
has frequently found Buddhism to be an interesting subject. Franz
Osten and Himansu Rai created what might be considered the first
“Buddhist film” in 1925 when they recast Sir Edwin Arnold’s 1861
poetic epic of the same name into the film Light of Asia.1 This is the
oldest film that has been screened at International Buddhist Film
Festival events. In English-language cinema, Buddhist ideals are
sometimes presented in disguised forms, such as when we find a
Shangri-La entrusted to ancient Caucasian caretakers in Lost Horizons
(1937). The Asian wise man with no attachment makes occasional
appearances, sometimes breaking through into television, as
in the television show Kung Fu (1972–1975).
Buddhism in popular culture can be overt in this manner, or it
can be inferred. For example, critics have argued that Buddhist bodhisattva
ideals find their way into science fiction fantasies such as the
Jedi Code of the Star Wars films. The countercultural celebration of
Asian difference has been an important motivation; Orientalist fantasy
can also account for the widespread dissemination of signs and
symbols originating from Asian philosophical and religious writings
and systems of practice.

Asian philosophy and religion has inspired American writers,
mainly poets and essayists associated with Transcendentalism, and
countercultural writers of the mid twentieth century, especially the
Beats, engaged with Asian thought much more thoroughly. In the
1990s, film seems to have superseded literature as the vehicle for
transcultural exchange, and we might want to ask why. In part the
issue would seem to be the declining prestige of literature as a leading
form of cultural expression. In the twenty-first century, it has
become surprising to see an American poet or novelist discussed in
the media in relation to a large national concern such as the 9/11
attacks on the World Trade Center. We are much more likely to see
a movie director or an actor commenting on a major event, an effect
of celebrity worship that Brad Pitt ridiculed when he was asked his
opinion about Tibet as a geopolitical issue: “Who cares what I think
China should do [about Tibet]?” he told Time magazine. “I’m a fucking
actor . . . I’m a grown man who puts on makeup” (Garner). That
said, actors such as Richard Gere have used their fame to publicize
Tibet as a human rights issue, even going so far as to get himself
banned as an Academy Award presenter after he used the event to
denounce the Chinese government.2
In addition to being the spiritual and temporal leader of the
Tibetan people in exile, the Dalai Lama arose over a ten-year period
to become a kind of superstar. He was first given a visa to give religious
teachings in the United States during the Carter administration
in 1979.3 While images of Buddha and representations of
Buddhist practices appeared sporadically in European and American
cinema before World War II, increasing somewhat in the postwar
period as a result of American military involvement in Asia and the
countercultural enthusiasms of Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg,
Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and others, cinematic representation of
Buddhism increased dramatically after the Dalai Lama was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989.4 The decade that followed could
be described as a cinematic Buddha Boom. The most well-known
cinematic representations of Buddha or Buddhism have been Little
Buddha (1994), Kundun (1997), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997),
and these films have extended popular knowledge of Buddhism
considerably.5
Whether Buddhist beliefs (about karma or reincarnation) or
practices (meditation, especially) have been in the foreground or
in the background, it is uncontestable that films, even as they have
traded upon the exoticism of Buddhism in the American imaginaire,
have made Buddhism far less exotic than it was previously.6 Buddhist
film is important because it is a marker of the impact of Asian philosophy
and religion on American culture. It is also important as a
culture resource, a way to signify within American culture in ways
that are quite distinct from what had previously been expressed. This
volume brings together mostly thematic approaches to Buddhist
film, and the focus is overwhelmingly on feature-length “fictional”
films. Why focus only on feature-length films? This volume is the
first of its sort, and the essays in it are responses to a call for original
essays on the topic. There is much to be studied in the area of documentary
expression. The phrase “Buddhist film” will make us think
of celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves. This is highly significant
(and weird), but it is a first association and, hopefully, not
the conclusion. These films have established the notion of “Buddhist
film” in various strands of academic and nonacademic discourse,
a notion that has been granted a degree of reification by the world
phenomenon of the “Buddhist film festival.”7
Since 2003, there have been more than two dozen well-publicized,
international Buddhist film festivals, which would suggest that
there is such a thing as a “Buddhist film.” The films shown in those
festivals are from many countries. Some are nonscripted documentaries,
some are full-length feature films meant for a wider distribution,
and the festivals have also presented television show episodes
and other manner of evidence that Buddhist ideas and images
have been making their way into American and European societies
through visual media. This volume—the first book-length collection
on Buddhism and film—focuses mainly on American feature-length
movies intended for wide distribution.
There are two distinct kinds of Buddhist films: those that are
about Buddhism and those that aren’t. Some Buddhist films represent
Buddhism, meaning the actual Buddha, important Buddhist figures,
ordinary people who are Buddhists, and so forth. But about
half of the essays discuss movies structured around themes that resonate
with Buddhist concerns, even though the films do not directly
treat ideas, characters, or settings that are typically associated with
those concerns. Some of the films that deal directly with Buddhism
as a worldview that are treated in detail include Heaven and Earth
 (1993), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Kundun (1997), and The Cup
(1999).8 These films, we note, are all about persons or populations
who are understood as victims of historical processes. Ly Le Hayslip’s
autobiographical works about the turmoil she experienced as a result
of war in Vietnam are the textual basis for the third film of Oliver
Stone’s Vietnam trilogy. The two Tibet films released in 1997 mark
the ascent of the Dalai Lama within the American imagination. First
given permission to visit America in 1979, he won a Nobel Prize
for peace ten years later and a Congressional Medal in 2007. Khyentse
Norbu’s The Cup is noteworthy in not constructing Buddhists
as victims, even though the film recognizes colonial domination by
the People’s Republic of China in several key scenes. The Americanmade
films center on Buddhism as a locus of innocence and, therefore,
powerlessness. Cultural interpreters become suspicious when
the most direct representations of an identity directly feed into a flattering
form of self-understanding, for example, the moral critic, if
not the savior.
There has been much discussion of Eurocentrism and of Western
(as it were) ideas and images achieving a kind of semiotic colonization
within Asian societies. If one wanted to enquire as to how
specifically Asian cultural practices and expressive traditions have
fared at making the trip the other way, one could look at phenomena
such as Asian martial arts, forms of self-cultivation such as meditation
and yoga, and religious systems such as Buddhism. The list is
not complete, but if one wanted to consider the cultural expressions
through which Buddhism enters the American imaginaire, the three
main avenues would appear to be the literary imagination, popular
film, and of course books (and, more recently, DVDs and downloads)
concerned with directly teaching methods and approaches
to Buddhist meditation. Which films have been the most significant
direct representations of Buddhism, for American audiences? The
films treated at length in this volume are of central importance.
Groundhog Day is perhaps the best example of a “non-Buddhist
Buddhist movie.” All schools of Buddhism maintain that in order to
be free from the cycle of suffering (samsara), beings must first give
up all forms of craving or attachment. Phil Connors either learns
this lesson in one day or ten thousand days, depending on how you
look at it. Groundhog Day offers the scenario in which one character
is trapped within a single day, one that repeats itself endlessly,
albeit with the possibility of change and learning. This magic-realist
framework can be understood quite well in terms of a Buddhist
understanding of samsara (the notion that beings are trapped in a
cycle of repetition because of ignorance) and karma (the notion that
our problems are caused by past actions and that we must eliminate
causes if we do not want to repeat results). The notions of samsara
and karma, when put together, are problems that require some form
of purification, either by meditation or good works of the sort that
bring beings to modify their reactive behaviors. Phil is initially arrogant
and has contempt for others, but he is able to gradually modify
himself until the conditions for happiness—and escape from the
punishing cycle—arise.
Just as Freud ranges through an analytically comprehensive set
of reactions to human suffering in the opening pages of Civilization
and Its Discontents, the film Groundhog Day explores Phil’s range of
responses to his own cycle-bound condition. Initially, he feels horrified
by the discovery that he is trapped within the American holiday
known as Groundhog Day, doomed to wake up to the Sonny and
Cher song “I Got You, Babe” for the rest of his (endless?) existence.
This horror gives way to suicidal despair, until Phil turns a corner and
experiences his godlike phase, a period of the film in which he uses
his general foreknowledge to advantage. Buddhism has a concept
known as the Six Realms of Existence that can be considered either a
literal division of existence or a set of psychological dispositions. The
lower realms are the Hell, Animal, and Hungry Ghost realms. The
upper realms are those of the Gods, Demigods, and Humans. It is a
mistake, however, to think the God realm is the ideal position, since
gods indulge to the point at which they fall into lower realms—as is
the case with Phil. His indulgence leads to suicidal despair.
In the last third of the film, Phil has become bored with indulgence
and sets out on a path of self-cultivation. Before the movie is
over, he has saved lives, helped old ladies, repeatedly caught a child
who falls from a tree (but who never thanks him!), and he has mastered
playing the piano and speaking French. It is interesting that he
attempts repeatedly to save the old man and that he catches the child
who falls from the tree. We can see that learning the piano could be a
stay against boredom, but his altruistic acts are less easily explained.
The film never mentions that he may be purifying himself, but it
is only when he is completely free of his most acquisitive urge—to
capture Rita’s body and then her heart—that he escapes the cycle. He
suffers because of various kinds of greed. When he overcomes the
desires that cause suffering, suffering ceases.
Then there are the “Buddhist films” that do not represent Buddhism,
either directly or figuratively. If we look, we will find them
mentioned in Buddhist blogs, and they sometimes have appeared
in Buddhist film festivals. Often, this is because a central thematic
concern of the film resonates quite strongly with a central thematic
concern of Buddhism itself, whether or not one would want to argue
for a direct influence. One important theme in many strands of Buddhist
belief is signified by the word that comes from the Tibetan tradition,
“bardo.” A bardo is any limbo-like intermediary period, but it
is used most often to refer to the state that, some Buddhists believe,
occurs between an individual’s death and some form of future incarnation.
9 Another key thematic idea predominant within Buddhism
and that has inspired American filmmakers is the notion that our
self-understanding—and perhaps even our experience of all phenomena—
is inflected at all levels by delusion. Essays in this volume
focusing on delusory experience and between-life and midlife
bardos include Lost in Translation (2003), American Beauty (1999),
Donnie Darko (2001), and Fight Club (1999). None of these films is
directly concerned with Buddhism in the manner of the previously
mentioned films. On the one hand, the films can be seen as ways in
which something alien is translated into more familiar terms. Also,
the films can be seen as essential statements about “how we are” that
are then subject to Buddhist-inspired modes of interpretation, such
as when one author develops the concept of samsara by using the
more familiar term “desperation” and locating it within the film It’s a
Wonderful Life (1946).

Part 1, Representation and Intention, collects essays on the most
well-known American movies that have directly represented Buddhism.
This section begins with “Buddhism and Authenticity in Oliver
Stone’s Heaven and Earth,” by Hanh Ngoc Nguyen and R. C. Lutz,
an essay that takes issue with the initial negative reception met by
Stone’s 1993 film. In particular, Hanh and Lutz develop a response to
Julia Foulkes’s complaint that Stone and Le Ly Hayslip (author of the
book on which the movie is based) have grossly misrepresented Buddhism
and refashioned the religion to make it more palatable for a
Western audience. Hanh and Lutz argue that this is not the case, but,
rather, that Stone has successfully represented a rich mixture of folk
and Buddhist elements that has been expressed in Hayslip’s nonfictional
narratives and in other representations of Vietnamese religion.
In chapter 2 Eve Mullen’s “Buddhism, Children, and the Childlike
in American Buddhist Films” looks at how filmmakers in the
West have appropriated Buddhism, considering films such as Little
Buddha (1993), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), and Kundun (1997) in
relation to what Donald Lopez calls “New Age Orientalism,” a mode
of imagination in which American rescuers save helpless Asians from
Asian villains. The first section contains several essays that represent
Buddhism directly but always within the key of Otherness, as we see
again in chapter 3. In “Consuming Tibet: Imperial Romance and the
Wretched of the Holy Plateau,” Jiayan Mi and Jason C. Toncic discuss
idealistic visions of Tibet before the Chinese invasions of the 1950s,
exploring the Orientalist predecessors to the “Buddha Boom” films
of the 1990s by drawing on cultural expressions from a half-century
before. James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, travel writer Sven Hedin’s novels,
and Frank Capra’s cinematic recasting of the Hilton novel are the
examples considered. Through a study of the imperialist attitudes
present in these representations, and drawing on Edward Said’s critique
on Orientalism and W. J. T. Mitchell’s ideology of the imperial
landscape, Mi and Toncic show that these texts misrepresent and distort
Tibet through its modes of conquest. During the Cold War and
through the 1990s, American audiences have rallied around Tibet—
perhaps it was the only issue about which the extremely conservative
senator Jesse Helms and the entirely countercultural poet Allen
Ginsberg agreed.
Chapter 4, Felicia Chan’s “Politics into Aesthetics: Cultural
Translation in Kundun, Seven Years in Tibet, and The Cup” offers a
comparative analysis of films by Martin Scorsese, Jean-Jacques Annaud,
and in relation to the problem of Orientalism, considering various
successes and failures of these films to adequately address the
problem of a dialectally reductive way of presenting the (Western)
self in relation to a Buddhist (and therefore “Eastern”) other. Chan
hopefully considers the possibilities of Buddhist cinema in the larger
sense, perhaps looking forward to a nondualist aesthetic that does
not so regularly fall into exoticization.

Part 2, Allegories of Shadow and Light, concerns films that may
or may not be informed by a Buddhist intention, but the author
makes the case with regard to each of these films that a Buddhistinformed
reading is a highly rewarding approach. In Tibetan Buddhism
as popularized by books such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead
the concept of the bardo, the space between one life and the next, is
a central concept. We could say that many of these films occupy a
semiotic “bardo” space between the films that are intentionally Buddhist
(both in terms of representation and thematic/philosophical
emphasis) and films that are not about Buddhism but that can be
usefully understood from a “Buddhistic” point of view.
Chapter 5 is “Momentarily Lost: Finding the Moment in Lost in
Translation,” by Jennifer L. McMahon and B. Steve Csaki, and it provides
a close reading of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003)
in relation to Buddhist concepts of momentariness and selflessness.
Rather than consider persons as bodies that contain impermanent
selves or souls, Buddhist psychology understands “self ” to be a side
effect of numerous conditions that shift from moment to moment.
The film concerns two characters who are momentarily lost and
caught in an instance of psychological bardo. “Momentarily Lost”
traces the film’s consideration of suffering and lostness in a generously
nonjudgmental manner, which McMahon and Csaki compare
to the suspense of judgment that is a key feature of mindfulness
meditation techniques.
If Nguyen and Lutz have argued for the (artistically if not financially)
successful crossing of Buddhism from Vietnamese into American
culture, in chapter 6 Harper and Anderson consider the ways
in which American cultural co-optation and assimilation have produced
a rather unusual kind of Buddhist discourse. In “Dying to
Be Free: The Emergence of ‘American Militant Buddhism’ in Popular
Culture,” David A. Harper and Richard C. Anderson discuss the
notion of redemptive violence as shown in American movies and
popular culture that characterizes “American Militant Buddhism.”
The authors explore the ways in which American popular culture
has adopted and appropriated Buddhism and reworked them to fit
into the American mythos—the Manifest Destiny and the American
Dream in such movies as the The Matrix (1999), Fight Club (1999),
and The Last Samurai (2003), as well as the popular rock band Rage
Against the Machine. Using the term “American Militant Buddhism,”
Harper and Anderson explore the effects and consequences of reinforcing
or legitimizing the right to spread liberation by employing
violence.
The next “bardo film” concerns not the individual per se but the
culture at a moment of transformative impasse. In “Buddhism, Our
Desperation, and American Cinema,” Karsten J. Struhl uses films
that are not thematically connected with Buddhism in chapter 7 to
explore the relation between desires, cravings, and meaningful existence
faced by the individual within a materialist and consumerist
society. Through Wall Street (1987), Annie Hall (1977), Leaving Las
Vegas (1995), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Struhl looks at a number
of cravings from money, status, love, alcohol, and suicide through
a Buddhist perspective in order to reveal how these cravings imply
a deeper existential problem of the illusion of the self and contribute
to growing Buddhist film criticism. Chapter 8 is “Christian Allegory,
Buddhism, and Bardo in Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko,” Devin
Harner’s exploration of a syncretic imagination of the bardo state in
Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001). Harner posits that the cyclical
open-endedness of Donnie Darko is a deliberate philosophical and
theological ambiguity fostered by Kelly, a form of cultural translation
that brings concepts such as the bardo across cultural borders.
In the ninth chapter, “‘Beautiful Necessities’: American Beauty
and the Idea of Freedom,” David L. Smith analyzes American Beauty
(1999), a film portraying the bardo between lives. Contrary to our
expectation that death and the various social and psychological conditions
of our lives are radically limiting factors, the film explores
the ways in which the postmortem standpoint from which the film
is narrated opens up a space of appreciation and a path to freedom
rather than the more typical notion that the moment of death begins
a process of judgment and constraint.
As Gary Gach notes in his afterword, “On Being Luminous,”
film appears to be a natural allegory for Buddhism—it projects, quite
unsubstantially, a series of images that connect us to a real world we
believe in more if we look at it less carefully. As soon as the projector
slows down, the individual frames appear, and the narrative continuity
is revealed to be a working fiction. This breakdown of reality
into causes and conditions—or, in the language of film, into sounds,
shadows, and wishes—can appear at times to be a tragedy, while
other times it is presented as the way to freedom. In films as different
as The Cup, Groundhog Day, and The Matrix, it can be both.
This book and the rest of the series Buddhism and American Culture
would not have been possible without the work of my coeditor,
Gary Storhoff, who passed away on November 7, 2011. About a year
earlier, Gary wrote to a few friends to say that his recent medical
check-up revealed that the pain he had been calling “an old sports
injury” was in fact stage-four cancer of a sort that the doctors did not
expect to beat. As always, Gary was a living lesson in graciousness.
Faced with people who said things like “I’m glad I got cancer because
it made me appreciate life,” Gary came back quickly with “I’m not
happy this has happened, but I did the right things and I’ve had a
good run.” I worked with Gary on this project for over ten years, and
it was always a pleasure to find the balance. He is greatly missed, and
this volume is dedicated to his memory. May all sentient beings have
the good fortune to meet truly fine individuals like Gary.



Notes
1. In the case of the Osten and Rai film, “Buddhist film” designates
a film that is in some sense a proponent, rather than one that
includes Buddhism as a mere reference point. Whereas the 1925
film offered an explanation of Buddhism, an earlier mention of
Buddha in American cinema, perhaps the first, occurred in the
1918 film The Soul of Buddha (which, according to a webpage
specializing in information about silent films, is now considered
lost: http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/S/SoulOfBuddha1918.
html). This silent film, which featured one of cinema’s first sex
symbols, actress Theda Bara, asserts in its title that Buddha had
a soul and so shows little or no knowledge of actual Buddhism.
Why does the film mention Buddha at all? Buddhism would
appear to function in this case as a mere backdrop. A few years
later another silent film would advertise Buddhism: The Silver
Buddha (1923) was a crime drama centered on the famous Orientalist
character Dr. Fu Manchu. Once again, a Buddhist object
directs the viewer’s attention to things exotic and strange. In the
following decade Buddha showed up in yet another crime drama,
starring Lon Chaney Jr. and variously titled The Secret of Buddha
and A Scream in the Night (1935). Turner Movie Classics webpage
has information: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/561646/
Scream-in-the-Night/, accessed 1 November 2012. The film,
which appears to be set in the Middle East but which turns on
the theft of jewels known as the “Tears of Buddha,” can be seen
on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGt2MD0drc0,
accessed 1 November 1012.
2. When I interviewed Mr. Penpa Tsering, the speaker of the house
of the Tibetan government-in-exile’s parliament, about “soft
power,” I asked about American celebrities who had been helpful
to the Tibetan cause. He said that Richard Gere was more helpful
than all the others combined. Personal communication, 20
November 2012.
3. The Dalai Lama visited the United States between September 3
and October 21, 1979. http://www.dalailama.com/biography/
travels/1959–1979, accessed 1 November 2012. Tenzin Tethong,
who is president of the Dalai Lama Foundation, helped organize
the Tibetan leader’s first visit to the United States in 1979, working
with Congressman Charlie Rose. As the United States had
recently regularized relations with the PRC, this event required
extensive diplomatic negotiations. See LeFevre, 2013, n.p.
4. Before the 1990s, literature was the most important conduit of
Buddhist imagery and theme from Asia into the American imagination.
Jack Kerouac’s roman à clef about Beat generation Buddhists,
The Dharma Bums, Allen Ginsberg’s Vajrayana-inspired
poetry such as “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” and Gary Snyder’s entire
oeuvre—especially his 1986 masterpiece Mountains and Rivers
without End—all helped increase America’s “cultural literacy”
such that words like “karma” and “dharma” are no longer foreign
words.
5. Martial arts films have often had a meditation component, usually
occurring in the period when the broken hero (Steven Seagal,
Jean-Claude Van Damme, etc.) has been recovering both
physically and mentally. After meditating a long time, usually
under the supervision of a mentor and while also kicking his
way through several banana trees, the hero can then proceed to
kill the people who killed the hero’s sister or wife or brother or
girlfriend or whomever.
6. Transcendentalist flirtations with Asian religion and philosophy
flavor the work of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman and modernist
writers, inspired by the haiku (or hokku, as it was called
[Higginson 1985: 20]). Three land wars in Asia and an impressive
body of belletristic literature are important precursors to
Hollywood’s embrace of Buddhist signs and symbols. Future
cultural historians will have to decide when, if ever, Buddhism
ceased to be “exotic.”
7. See “What Is a Buddhist Film?” Contemporary Buddhism (May
2014), for a full discussion of the phenomenon of the Buddhist
film festival as a global event. I have borrowed some passages
from that article.
8. The last film is by the Bhutanese director who mainly resides in
India named Khyentse Norbu—and who is at least as well known
as an internationally famous Buddhist teacher under the name
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. Although the director is
by no means American, the films just mentioned must invariably
be discussed together for reasons that become clear in the essays.
9. “Reincarnation” can indicate a one-to-one correspondence
between the person who died and the person who is born into
a new life, but Buddhism denies that there is an immutable soul
that is transferred from body to body. Often, the term “rebirth”
is used to signify a continuity between lives that is not understood
as the repetition of the same personality or soul within a
new body.


© 2014 State University of New York Press, Albany

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